XII

THE MIGHT OF THE DEAD

1

In _A Beleaguered City_, a little book which, in its curious way, is a
masterpiece, Mrs. Oliphant shows us the dead of a provincial town
suddenly waxing indignant over the conduct and the morals of those
inhabiting the town which they had founded. They rise up in rebellion,
invest the houses, the streets, the market-places and, by the pressure
of their innumerable multitude, all-powerful though invisible, repulse
the living, thrust them out of doors and, setting a strict watch,
permit them to return to their roof-trees only after a treaty of peace
and penitence has purified their hearts, atoned for their offences
and ensured a more worthy future.

There is undoubtedly a great truth beneath this fiction, which appears
too far-fetched because we perceive only material and ephemeral
realities. The dead live and move in our midst far more really and
effectually than the most venturesome imagination could depict. It is
very doubtful whether they remain in their graves. It even seems
increasingly certain that they never allowed themselves to be confined
there. Under the tombstones where we believe them to lie imprisoned
there are only a few ashes, which are no longer theirs, which they
have abandoned without regret and which, in all probability, they no
longer deign to remember. All that was themselves continues to have
its being in our midst. How and under what aspect? After all these
thousands, perhaps millions, of years, we do not yet know; and no
religion has been able to tell us with satisfying certainty, though
all have striven to do so; but we may, by means of certain tokens,
hope to learn.

Without further considering a mighty but obscure truth, which it is
for the moment impossible to state precisely or to render palpable,
let us concern ourselves with one which cannot be disputed. As I have
said elsewhere, whatever our religious faith may be, there is in any
case one place where our dead cannot perish, where they continue to
exist as really as when they were in the flesh and often more
actively; and this living abiding-place, this consecrated spot, which
for those whom we have lost becomes heaven or hell according as we
draw close to or depart from their thoughts and their desires, is in
us.

And their thoughts and their desires are always higher than our own.
It is, therefore, by uplifting ourselves that we approach them. It is
we who must take the first steps, for they can